Un­i­group and XMC com­bine their chip as­sets

Ts­inghua Un­i­group Ltd merged its mem­ory chip­mak­ing op­er­a­tions with Wuhan Xinxin Semi­con­duc­tor Man­u­fac­tur­ing Corp’s, creat­ing one of the coun­try’s largest man­u­fac­tur­ers of semi­con­duc­tors.

The com­pany is fold­ing XMCinto its grow­ing port­fo­lio of as­sets and con­sol­i­dat­ing their com­bined pro­duc­tion ca­pac­ity, Un­i­group’s bil­lion­aire Chair­man Zhao Weiguo said via e-mail. The newly merged en­tity is called Changjiang Stor­age Co with Zhao as chair­man.

Un­i­group, an af­fil­i­ate of the pres­ti­gious Ts­inghua Univer­sity, har­bors am­bi­tions of be­com­ing a global player in semi­con­duc­tors. It has pur­sued deals around the globe as the stan­dard-bearer of China’s ef­fort to build a lo­cal in­dus­try gi­ant and wean the coun­try off for­eign tech­nol­ogy. Its core busi­ness of semi­con­duc­tors is seen by the na­tion’s lead­er­ship as vi­tal to na­tional se­cu­rity.

The com­pany is just one of sev­eral af­fil­i­ates of State­backed Ts­inghua Univer­sity. Other arms in­clude Ts­inghua Unis­plen­dour Co and Ts­inghua Tong­fang Co.

To­gether they’ve spear­headed a spate of high-pro­file ac­qui­si­tions in re­cent years. Un­i­group bought RDA Mi­cro­elec­tron­ics Inc and Spread­trum Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc, and came close to a po­ten­tial $23 bil­lion bid for Mi­cron Tech­nol­ogy Inc.

But it with­drew from a $3.8 bil­lion in­vest­ment in Western Dig­i­tal Corp in the face of a US se­cu­rity re­view.

Its lat­est tar­get, XMC, be­gan op­er­a­tions in 2008 and claims it’s one of the largest play­ers in do­mes­tic semi­con­duc­tors.

It’sun­veiled plans to par­tic­i­pate in the build­ing of a $24 bil­lion semi­con­duc­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing mega-com­plex that the gov­ern­ment is es­tab­lish­ing in its home prov­ince of Hubei in cen­tral China.

An XMC spokes­woman con­tacted by phone said she wasn’t im­me­di­ately able to com­ment.